Getting To The Meat Of Spam

Spam is a part of everyday life. These unwanted, unsolicited emails are a constant nuisance and flood email boxes daily. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 attempts to address this issue, but there are glaring problems with this law, including the fact that third parties are not liable. If thirdparties, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and others, will spam ever stop? The problem has been discussed in technical circles for years. There have been Request for Comments (RFCs) related to spam, such as RFC 2505, but most people seem to throw up their hands when faced with this problem. This paper discusses the current interest in spam from an Intellectual Property (IP) aspect. It also discusses the problems with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and gives RFCs to review. It’s time we engineers got to the meat of spam!